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BRIEF HISTORY OF THE HOUSE OF STUART TO THE
DEATH OF JAMES THE FIRST OF ENGLAND.

WHEN the most brilliant French writer of the eighteenth century asserted that, with the exception of the Stuarts, there is not known to history any sovereign house whose members were uninterruptedly devoted to misfortune for several successive c turies, there is no doubt that, little as Voltair e historian, may be entitled to our confide his remark is, nevertheless, perfectly consistent with truth, and conveys, in a few words, a correct impression of the fate of the family. With the exception of some of the earliest founders of the house, all appeared to be borne down by a fatal destiny, which, however,

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on closer examination, loses much of its mystery, for scarcely one of these princes became the sacrifice of circumstances that might not have been anticipated, and the majority drew misfortune upon themselves by their own faults; but it may be termed a singularly malicious stroke of destiny, that the race of the warlike Stuarts should have closed with a man, endowed by nature with every quality that might have entitled him to a happier lot, who strove with energy and perseverance to attain the goal to which those qualities enabled him to aspire, whose daring efforts carried him within view of the point he aimed at, and all only to consign him to a fate more painful, perhaps, than any Stuart before him had ever experienced.

To present a picture of the life of this man is the object of the present work; but, before we enter upon the more immediate subject of our attention, we may be allowed to throw a hasty glance over the relations of a country, which the hero of our history may well have deemed his own, and to pass in review the more immediate predecessors of his race.

Since the year 1370, when the first Stuart mounted the throne of Scotland, under the title

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